


Exchange

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Canon Jewish Character, Courtship, Gift Giving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7501767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a gift in Bastogne--three squares of chocolate, and peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exchange

**Author's Note:**

> I had a little Liebgott fest over at my blog, and this was one of the results. It was longer by any of the others by 500 words so it felt worthy of a post on AO3; if you're interested, the rest is on my tumblr [here.](warriorgays.tumblr.com/tagged/liebgott-fest)

One morning in Bastogne, Babe comes up to him and says “Here.” He holds out his gloved hand to reveal three squares’ worth of chocolate lying on a scrap of paper. “What, you don’t want it?” he says impatiently when Liebgott doesn’t immediately reach for it.

“Sure I do,” he says quickly, and he snatches it up. There’s a hole in his glove through which he can feel the velvety surface of the chocolate. “What’s this for?”

“To eat.” He thinks that Babe might be smirking behind his scarf, and then he shrugs. “You looked like you needed it. I dunno.”

“Thanks, Babe.” Liebgott gnaws on one corner of the sweet. It’s cold and hard, and it would be easier on his teeth if he put it all in his mouth at once to melt, but then it would be gone in five minutes, and he wants to make it last. “Hang on,” he says. “I think I got two or three cigs left. The good shit, Lucky Strikes.”

“Nah,” Babe says, stomping his feet in the dirty snow. “It’s a gift, not a trade.”

For a minute, Liebgott is confused. They’re not _friends_. Then he decides not to question it, and he shrugs, too.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He parcels that little bit of chocolate out all through the day, a little shaving of sweetness that melts on his tongue every time he thinks about shooting his damn foot off. It is only over the course of a week or so, as he faces the hell of the Ardennes Forest with a lighter heart than before, that he really understands the weight of the gesture. A tiny piece of chocolate, on a normal day, is worth maybe one cigarette. But on a day in Bastogne, when Liebgott is just about ready to point his gun at anything that will get him out of here, it’s worth a hell of a lot more. He doesn’t have anything to trade for that--not on a normal day.

So he waits, and watches Babe out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until the day when Buck, Guarnere, and Toye all leave. Babe is a popular guy and he has plenty of friends, but those three were more than friends--they were his mentors. Liebgott remembers them taking Babe under their wings his first week in the unit, and that never happened to privates, let alone replacements. Babe walks around with a dazed look in his eye like he doesn’t understand where they’ve gone, like he’s expecting them to pop up from behind a tree at any minute.

Everyone knows what’s up, and that night there are two tight circles of men sitting down to dinner, one drawn around Malarkey and the other around Babe. They don’t ask stupid questions like “are you okay?” but still they pester him, hey Babe you want some coffee, hey Babe are your beans cold do you want to switch with mine, goddamn Dike’s an asshole right Babe?

“Hey,” Liebgott finds himself calling out. “Quit your yapping over there, won’t ya? I can hardly hear myself think.”

“Sorry, Liebgott,” Babe says gratefully, and his response forestalls the guys who would have just told Liebgott to fuck off.

A few minutes later, Liebgott takes two cigarettes out of his pocket and holds them up, his eyes fixed on Babe. The other man sees him and nods, and they retreat to a little private space by the trees. Babe pops a cigarette in his mouth and pulls out his lighter. He lights Liebgott’s, but then the flame sputters and he can’t get it to spark again.

“Damn,” he mutters. He shakes it uselessly.

“Here,” Liebgott says. He leans forward and lights Babe’s smoke with the end of his own.

The redhead mutters his thanks and suddenly Liebgott thinks of a boy he kissed once just like this. A sweet kid, blonde, with big cinnamon-brown eyes. Liebgott had been sitting on a bench in a park during the blue hour, as he lit his cigarette the kid walking by had stopped and asked for a light--then he leaned forward, bypassing the lighter until their mouths were only an inch or two apart. It had been so quiet he could hear the hiss as the paper ignited, and when the boy pulled back, his brown eyes were sparkling.

Babe’s eyes are on the ground. They smoke together for a few minutes, and then Babe says “thanks” again and returns to his friends.

-

At the church, Babe finds a hymnal and sits next to Joe so he can read the words that all the other guys know by heart.

At Hagenau, when Babe is reluctant to black up his class ring for the patrol, Joe offers to keep it safe for him. He keeps it in his pocket and his hand returns to it several times that night, slipping it over his thumb. The metal is warm when he gives it back.

Outside of Munich, when Joe has sentry duty and can’t help but stare at every German who passes (are you a Nazi? are you? is it you?), Babe joins him for twenty minutes and sneaks him a sip of gin.

On the road to Bavaria, Joe gets hold of a German newspaper and translates for Babe, embellishing as needed until the man is laughing too hard to breathe. Other people listen in, too, but he only repeats himself if Babe doesn’t hear, and pushes forward when Babe looks interested even if no one else caught a single word.

-

At Landsberg am Lech, Liebgott curls up in the corner of a bunkbed and yells at anyone who tries to enter the room. Babe comes in and sits on the other end of the mattress.

“There’s nothing you can fucking trade for this,” Liebgott snarls.

“Yeah, I know,” Babe says in a hoarse voice. He sounds like he’s been crying. “I’m just gonna sit.”

 _That’s okay_ , Liebgott thinks. _As long as he doesn’t talk_. He doesn’t think he could stand to listen to anything any goy has to say right now.

But then the silence is thick with anticipating, and as the moment stretches longer and longer, Liebgott finds it harder to breathe--first through his nose and then through his mouth--and then harder to swallow. _Say something. Say something! Say something that will fix me and make me feel like this fucking world is worth living in. Say anything_.

Babe touches a hand to his ankle and a shock jolts through Liebgott’s whole body. The fingers curl in one gentle movement around the bone protected only by a thin layer of tight skin. Liebgott wants to cry.

“Get the fuck out of here, Heffron. Just--fucking get out.”

He yanks his leg back and Babe stands.

“Okay. I’m--sorry.”

That word, _sorry_ , stutters out of his mouth, and Babe winces and leaves the room. Liebgott pulls his legs up into a tight ball, cursing under his breath as the tears start to push out of his eyes. He shouldn’t be here. He should be out there, with _them_ , he belongs with them, but he can’t bury his guilt and go to them any more than the men in his company can come to him. Too late, he realizes that he doesn’t want to be alone. He wishes he hadn’t sent Babe away--what the hell is wrong with him, why can’t he make up his damn mind?

The wooden door creaks, then, and he calls out “Babe?” hopefully before realizing that he’s going to sound like an idiot if he’s wrong.

But he’s not wrong. The door opens again and Babe is standing there, lingering on the doorstep.

“Yeah, Joe?”

“Can you--?”

He doesn’t finish the sentence because he doesn’t know what he wants the other man to do, and if he did he would just change his mind again.

“Sure, Joe,” Babe says anyway.

He hesitates at the door for another second, trying to guess at what Joe was asking, and takes a step inside. When Joe doesn’t shout at him, he walks all the way up to the bed, pauses, and sits down. His hand touches Liebgott’s shoulder and remains there for a long time.

-

On V-E day, Liebgott acquires a bottle of champagne. Webster tells him that it’s bad champagne--cheap--but he doesn’t give a fuck. He pops the cork and gulps it down, and it sets fireworks racing up and down his skin. He drinks half of it before he thinks to find Babe. There is a town hall in the center of the city that the Army has requisitioned for its own use, and Liebgott sulks around the crowded main room for twenty minutes until Babe spots him. Right away he turns and leaves; Babe follows him out.

“Hey,” he breathes. His face is already flushed.

“Hey. You want some champagne?”

“Yeah.” Babe takes the bottle. “What’s it taste like?”

Liebgott shrugs, but he puts the bottle to his lips anyway and takes a swig. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip afterwards, and Liebgott knows what he’s feeling, the spark of the carbonation. They pass the bottle between them for a few minutes, sharing it like cigarette smoke, but after a few passes it is empty, and Liebgott drops it carelessly on the ground.

He puts his hands on the sides of Babe’s neck.

“I’m gonna kiss you,” he announces. Then a hot flash of doubt strikes him. “Can--can I kiss you?”

Babe nods.

“Yeah--yeah, you can if you want.”

Joe touches their mouths together, chapped skin against chapped skin, and realizes how loud the night is, with the cheers and the music behind him. Babe is quiet. Liebgott is quiet, too, except he’s drunk so his breathing feels too loud and his heart is racing.

His nails press into the base of Babe’s neck and the other man reaches up to wrap his fingers in a loose circle around Liebgott’s wrist. Bone again, thin skin, he feels so fragile when Babe touches him there. He licks his way into Babe’s champagne-slick mouth, and the taste on his tongue is sweet.


End file.
